...And, of course, Linux took all the difference:)
Now seriously though, old computers die. New computers come in, they either have no XP drivers or come with preinstalled/bundled Windows 7, or Linux flavors, or whatever, not to mention the vast array of Mobile devices which can connect to the Internet and have no room for Win XP. Windows XP use falling is expected, just like any old OS or OS version. I suspect much of the change comes simply because time passes.

"The neuroscientists ran a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) test on an Apple fanatic and discovered that images of the technology company's gadgets lit up the same parts of the brain as images of a deity do for religious people, the report says.

I just don't understand why guys that are supposed to be good at math just can't seem to grasp that yes Linux only has 1% [binplay.com] and this is even giving Linux the benefit of the doubt by using heavily nerdish sites like/. in the counting!

As a PC retailer who has tried Ubuntu/Mint, Mepis, and PCLOS on the stacks of off lease office PCs that go through the shop I'll be happy to tell you why Linux is stuck at 1%...your driver model sucks! I'd love to be able to offer Linux on my PCs, as most of what my customers do can easily be done on any Web accessing OS, but until you fix the driver model so that the 6 month upgrades don't make the drivers shit themselves? Well I just can't carry your product.

I have 8+ year old XP boxes in the field where the only thing I've had to do was the occasional hardware upgrade but out of all the office boxes I tried not a single one survived the 6 month deathmarch unscathed with all having at least 1 driver shit itself, usually more than 1, and it didn't matter if I used FOSS or non FOSS drivers it was the same. But what can you expect when the head of Linux, old Linus Torvalds himself says Plans? We don't need no steenkin plans, it'll go like a virus LOL! [kerneltrap.org] yeah Linus its called the clap. That kind of attitude was fine when it was just him and his buds trading builds on IRC, but it ain't 1993 anymore and that kind of bullshit won't cut it in retail.

As a wise Linux user told me when I complained about the constant driver breaks "Yeah, it does that, you just have to get used to it" which is fine if your time is worthless and you think spending an evening in front of Bash while trawlling the forums for "fixes" is nice? Then I'm happy for you. But as a retailer I can tell you that kind of shit just won't fly if you want more than the 1% you currently have. if you want the public to embrace you then you have to give them what THEY want, not tell them they have to do things YOUR way. They will NOT "Open up Bash and type" and in fact see the term for what it is, a 70s throwback that doesn't belong on a modern OS, they will NOT trawl forums for "fixes", nor will they spend days looking up obsolete hardware lists in the hopes of finding something that they can buy that will actually work in Linux.

Fix this, make it so there is a stable ABI or hell sacrifice Linus to Cthulu if that is what it takes so drivers are "write once, use for years" and retailers like me will be happy to carry your product. think we like shelling out for Windows licenses? Hell no! But I can't sell a product where every 6 months something can be broken for a week or more because Linus got an itch and Goatse'd the kernel. It is simple math folks, you have X number of guys qualified to maintain drivers, you have Y times tens of thousands of drivers. Even if the driver devs never slept and spent 24/7 doing nothing but rewriting borked drivers you would ALWAYS be behind!

Honest question. I used to have issues with drivers gakking themselves, but that has been quite some time. These days, everything in my computers "just works". Even my brand new laptop, which actually came with Ubuntu preinstalled on it (I replaced it with my distro of choice, but let's not get into that flamewar, yeah?), everything works out of the box. Installing my printer was a bit of a pain, but it wasn't impossible... I just had to download the ppd file for the p

One person's anecdotal experience here: I've run between 2-5 Linux boxen for about 13 years, most of which did some combination of desktop, server, and real-time audio processing, and during that time, on a box I built and installed myself, I have NEVER had a driver regression, EVER. I've seen plenty while helping friends with Ubuntu and other allegedly user-friendlier distros. But insofar as possible, I use only officially-supported hardware, with free (libre) drivers, and I also use a source-based dist

Let me guess...the only people that make these mythical perfect Linux drivers are the guys writing for enterprise hardware, which if you are gonna pay that kind of money why not just buy Apple and have the resale value down the line? And doesn't that drive a stake in the whole "Linux is a drop in replacement for Windows!" meme that has been pushed here so often?

Because here are the different drivers that have broken on different hardware during the upgrade deathmarch, in no particular order, and we are talk

Y'know, I don't see the "KDE vs Gnome" problem: Applications using GTK work perfectly well on KDE, and Qt ones work fine on Gnome. Sure, you've got alternative desktop environments... but that's a *good* thing. It means we can have multiple different approaches, no one-size-fits-all crap.For example, KDE's great when you've got the graphical muscle to handle it(like Aero), but I wouldn't run it on an old machine. Conversely, LXDE absolutely flies on my laptop, but it's a bit minimalist for my main desktop.O

Comparing all recently sold android devices to all recently sold IOS devices the android devices come out on top by a wide margin. IOS isn't even dominating severely on a phone by phone basis and there is only one single source of it.

Take me for example, I've had a LOT of phones in the past and by far my #1 requirement is reception. Not how shiny it is. As such I tend to prefer motorola, samsung, or blackberries. HTC has mediocre reception, on par with what I've seen from the iphone, which won't work at all

Half the people I know with macs have installed Windows 7 on them. About half of those people have stopped using OSX all together, and intend on never buying Apple products again. Aren't anecdotes fun.

My anecdote is funner, but it has financial results to trump your anecdote. See, everyone I know with a Mac has a Windows partition, but none of them use it. They 'think' they need Windows, but as new Mac converts, they learn that they really don't need Windows, and they start to understand that people like me who have been Windows free since 1989 aren't crazy zealots, and they no longer boot into Windows except to play games (and even that is dwindling).

Not really a problem for me as I am running Linux on the Cloud\Laptop\Smartphone. The only reason it isn't on my Desktop is because that is mandated by my place of employ. Now hand me back my razor. I like to be clean shaven.

FYI, just looked this up and assuming that Windows 8 releases next year and they decide to expand Extended Support to all editions of Windows, support for Windows 7 will end after the first Patch Tuesday in 2020.

They're clearly trying to accomplish getting an answer to Apple's iPad, with a truly tablet friendly OS and UI that is also as powerful as a desktop. They hope that differentiation helps make up for how late they're coming to the game.

They're also trying to unify the look and feel across their phones, tablets, and desktops... as well as providing a bridge between local computers and "the cloud" (sort of a half-step, as opposed to Google's Chromebook/ChromeOS).

Given the similar code base of Windows XP and Windows 2000, and the fact that MANY exploits are cross-version, it's probably safe to say a lot of the currently reported WindowsXP exploits affect Windows 2000. Extended support for Windows 2000 was retired 7/13/2010, which was more than 10 years after release (2/17/2000). G

Really, I'm finding that you westerners are really paranoid about security holes and what-not. Here in the third world we have multitudes of computers running unpatched (often pirated) versions of windows, yet somehow our civilisation is still progressing, there's no imminent danger of us having an information technology meltdown just yet.

A friend of mine still runs windows 2000, and that only at my extreme nudging that he should drop 9X flavored kernels several years ago.

Given how I dislike Microsoft's current move toward treating users like cattle (Really, how else can you explain the current incarnation of the control pannel?) I can't make myself push him to upgrade again.

I'd push him to Linux, if Wine could support his "Really old graphic arts software" he runs.

He is very much computing in a 90s timewarp, and doesnt want to leave it.

I'd push him to Linux, if Wine could support his "Really old graphic arts software" he runs.

I used to dual boot between Windows XP and Linux because I preferred to use Linux but there are applications that require Windows. After a recent hard-drive crash, I re-evaluated my setup and tried out VirtualBox - and it's fantastic!

Essentially you run it as a virtual machine on your host system (Linux) where you can then have Windows run in a box. I've been using that setup since January and I love it! I even managed to copy the partition of my work laptop and got it working as a virtual computer as well.

The biggest shortcomings are that I cannot get my Creative Zen to work in the virtual computer. Also, support for writing to DVD/CDs is not very good. I haven't found a good workaround for the Zen (gnomad2 kind of works), and for the DVD stuff, k3b works well on the native Linux side.

I also had success in getting the same image to work on my mom's computer running Vista. She hates vista and a lot of her old games don't work on it. She's thrilled to play her old favorite card game in the virtual computer I set up for her.

VirtualBox is now owned by Oracle, but I think it's still open source. I didn't try VMWare because VirtualBox as served my needs pretty well. You might want to look into it.

I've got a gtx280 and a high res (2048x1536) desktop.. there are times when I click on a non-focused window and start dragging that there're split second delays before the gui responds.. this is one example. there are many others. turning off aero fixes the problem completely.. tbh, I'm not really enamored of fully gpu accelerated guis.. the old block-fill accelerated GDI+ was and is MUCH faster and more responsive (and less heavy on the hw)..

Ok, First, let me apologize for the violent tone of this reply--- This is something I feel very strongly about, because it directly impacts how well I can do my work, and could be solved fairly painlessly If redmond would be a little more considerate, I think.

That said:

(As a home user) I refuse to use an operating system that treats me like I dont know what an ACL is, or how to set up user accounts as more than just "User" or "administrator". (For starters.)

The problem here is that computers became "good enough" for homework and Facebook a long time ago, and even a 2 GHz P4 is fast enough for anything that's not a recent 3D game. This realization, along with the introduction of Intel's power-sipping Atom CPU whose performance is in the same ballpark as an old P4 clock for clock, led to the netbook fad and to the continued use of paid-for PCs.

a 1.6ghz atom is roughly equivalent to a pentium3 800Mhz. a 2Ghz P4 should have no problem. none of them will be speed demons.. the only issue is ram. if you have less than 1GB, it will swap. turn off the bling and you're fine..

its not dead yet! good for netbooks, still, and for hardware that won't ever be supported by win7.

I have a friend who is building new hardware to replace old hardware and the ONLY reason he has to throw out the old (not that its not working; it is!) is that there are no drivers for win7 for that usb device and its 'easier' to design a new pcboard and put a chip there than to port or find old drivers to win7.

Serious though, I just installed 7 on my gaming rig(was XP) a few days and even earlier today as I surfed the net to download 64bit drivers/apps was realizing this would show up on peoples pages (and the fact I'm using FF 5.x rather than 3.x)

We have new hardware to install in my church's office. The old computers run XP, purchased as charity licenses. The new hardware came with Vista (bleck!), and I was hoping we could install Windows 7 instead. However, it seems that Microsoft decided to do away with charity licenses. That means that we'd be stuck spending over $400 for a 3-pack of licenses for machines that totaled $750 in hardware. That's not even remotely going to happen. As a result, we're going to be shoe-horning XP back onto the *new* machines, and I'll be installing an Ubuntu dual-boot on them to see if there's any way to get the staff to consider moving to it. Go-go-gadget greed, Microsoft!

We have new hardware to install in my church's office. The old computers run XP, purchased as charity licenses. The new hardware came with Vista and I was hoping we could install Windows 7 instead. As a result, we're going to be shoe-horning XP back onto the *new* machines, and I'll be installing an Ubuntu dual-boot on them to see if there's any way to get the staff to consider moving to it. Go-go-gadget greed, Microsoft!

Tech for non-profits:

TechSoup Global, founded in 1987 as The CompuMentor Project, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides technology assistance to other nonprofit organizations in the United States and in 35 countries.
TechSoup.Org Product Donations, originally known as DiscounTech and later as TechSoup Stock, is a technology product philanthropy service for nonprofits which was launched in January 2002. It is the exclusive U.S. distributor of Microsoft product donations, and helps to connect nonprofits and libraries to over 430 different product donations from 45 donating partners (including Cisco, Symantec, Sun and Adobe).

Microsoft software donations are still mainstays of the TechSoup program. And it's a good thing! Since they started the program in 1998, Microsoft has donated more than $3.9 billion worth of software to nonprofit organizations in more than 100 countries worldwide, now reaching over 40,000 nonprofits each year.

Organizations can now request Microsoft products as needed, not just once per year. Also, there is no longer a five-seat minimum requirement, so an organization can request just one license if that is all it needs.

Now you can request from up to 10 different Microsoft title groups in each two-year cycle

Take our Check Program Eligibility Quiz --- see if you're eligible for Microsoft and our 44 other donation programs.

To learn more about the updates to the Microsoft Software Donation Program and how they affect your organization, visit our Overview of the Microsoft Software Donation Program. Then, join us on August 4, 2011, for a free webinar Microsoft Donation Program: How Does It Work?

Wow, thanks for linking that!!! Looks like we might actually be able to "upgrade" to an OS that's not about to have a bullet put in it, without breaking our very stressed bank;-)
Of course, that doesn't hold true for Office, as there's no way I'd subject our staff to the latest version given the unanimous horrible things I've heard about it. OpenOffice FTW...

For Microsoft, it's the difference between the Presbyterian Home For The Aged and The First Presbyterian Church. The food bank sponsored by Catholic Charities and The Holy Trinity R.C. Church on Tenth Street.

Microsoft has a steeply discounted "open licensing" program for charities through its VAR sales partners. TechSoup can still be of help to you for other software.

Of course, that doesn't hold true for Office, as there's no way I'd subject our staff to the latest version given the unanimous horrible things I've heard about it. OpenOffice FTW...

I think you should give "The Ribbon" a try. It has been an insanely successful product at retail a

However, it seems that Microsoft decided to do away with charity licenses.

The didn't do away with charity licenses. They went through a review process and our charity had to register (re-register?) with Microsoft and use a charity reseller that's on their "approved" charity reseller list.

It was actually my reseller that warned me of this, not Microsoft. We had to submit proof we were a charity. I don't recall having to do that prior.

Install Mac OS on 3 computers where the hardware totaled $750? I'm pretty sure there's something in the Mac OS terms that says you are not allowed to install it on any hardware that costs under $1000 per machine. There's definitely a clause in section 2 there [apple.com] that says you're only allowed to install it on Apple-branded hardware.

So which is it, are you suggesting he break the terms of the license, or increase the budget by 4 times?

...Because he clearly is on a budget. You can't buy more than one Mac for $750. Macs are not for those on a budget, while if you are looking for a fairly high-end system Macs aren't that bad of a deal, but as for a budget system, Macs aren't an option.

Same way I run XP; VMware under Leopard; I sandbox XP away from the Intertubez, I keep a nice saved copy of the VM, and no worries at all.

What's really fun is when I'm running XP under OSX in a VM, and under XP, I'm running my 6809 emulation [blackbeltsystems.com], and in the 6809 emulation, I'm running the debugger. It's like the "13th Floor", only better.

Yes, yes, security concerns and all... but since when does Joe Randomuser care?

WinXP is the first Windows OS that has everything the user wants, even when the next system (actually, the two next systems) is out. When 98 came out, it was a definite upgrade to 95, not to mention that quite a few games soon required 98SE. 2k was a big leap ahead from 98 and NT, combining the versatility of the 9x line with the stability of the NT line, adding out of the box USB support to both. XP again brought new bells and whistles and WiFi support, more stability and more user friendliness.

No, I didn't forget ME. I decided to ignore regressions in development.

But Vista/7? What's the big benefit compared to XP?

DirectX10? So what? Few games really require it, you can do without. Aero? Please, let's talk about something useful, shall we? Now, I am probably not an expert on Windows, but that's pretty much all where I can see Vista/7 sing "everything you do I can do better".

There is simply no reason for people to jump onto Vista/7. I do assume that the "drop" in XP is simply due to people getting new computers with a new system, which is pretty much by default not XP but probably Win7 if they decide for a Windows OS.

While I agree with you completely on Vista, Win7 does have one killer feature for a lot of people - reliable 64bit support. XP64 is horribly broken, painful, and mostly unsupported by software and hardware manufacturers.

I'm not even Joe Randomuser; I work at a software development company and work my Windows XP PC hard every day. Then I go home and play games on my Windows XP system at home. When I'm out and about, my Windows XP laptop does the trick.

I've never had a virus, trojan, or anything. I've followed basic rules - run Windows update, run a virus scanner, don't install foreign objects.

My PCs are rock solid. I don't want the downtime of upgrading and the hassle of moving to a new environment. They're tools that do ex

Almost half of all people on-ine (and with no consideration for off-line usage) are still using a decade-old OS. And that's bad why? My fucking Atari 800 blew the doors off of anything that came along for more than a decade and its OS was fucking hard-coded into a 10KB ROM pack (upon which we piggy-backed 4 other selectable 10KB OS.ROMs)

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When an OS -- even from a company you don't like -- does the job it's supposed to do, what's the problem? Of course I like my various *nix installs as long as they do what I need them to do, but if you have to use Windows for anything, XP is the last in a (supported) line which will still more or less do what you tell it to do. You may recall that XP (like everything before it) installs with a basic version of Win3.1.

XP is the OS that was promised when 95 was delivered. While it still has it's issues, it's successors remain less than compelling upgrades. This is in stark contrast to it's predecessors (3.11, 95, 98).

This is a statistic I watch. Mostly I am curious about Android usage, as well as other mobile usage, versus desktop usage. I'm also interested in desktop Linux usage.

Alexa shows Wikipedia to be the 7th most popular site on the web. Wikipedia is unique in that it is one of the few top sites not run for profit. Consequently, they allow open traffic analysis of their web traffic to some extent, which I have found very useful. Here is what operating systems [wikimedia.org] hit Wikipedia web sites in June 2011. They hav

For a new computer, Win7 makes sense. However, I don't see much reason to upgrade an existing computer that is running Windows XP perfectly well. The only reason I can think of is if one's running 32-bit XP on a 64-bit computer and want to increase the RAM.

However, I don't see much reason to upgrade an existing computer that is running Windows XP perfectly well.

I agree, absolutely.

All of my digital audio workstations that I use for music production still run XP SP3. Though I might see how my DAW apps run in Win7 just because I have access to a lot more RAM. The 64 bit versions that run in XP 64 are a little goofy still, but I hear the 64 bit versions run great in Windows 7.

The summary is not accurate. Just because 50% or fewer of those hitting their pages are using XP to browse the web doesn't mean that it has less than 50% of the desktop. I have multiple boxes, of which a few are XP that never hit the web. But that doesn't mean I don't use them. And, again, they imply that everyone that uses a computer uses the web. It's not even a good gauge. When it hits in the low 30% or even 20% then I'll think something of it, and that likely will be that people are upgrading thei

The summary is not accurate. Just because 50% or fewer of those hitting their pages are using XP to browse the web doesn't mean that it has less than 50% of the desktop.

True, but there is no reliable (and practical) way to measure the OS usage other than to look at web server hits. And since it is a purely arbitrary statistic which should not be used to determine which OS is right for you then it really doesn't matter how accurate the percentage is.

Because the Pentium 4 was inefficient garbage. Assuming you leave it on all the time and replaced the board and processor with a Core 2 three years ago, you would have already made up the difference in power savings.

Honestly if you don't want or need the new features and have adequately secured your install... Its fine to run older software as long as you aren't being limited by it or are OK with those limitations.

That's exactly what I think. My parents (in their sixties) use Windows XP that I installed, keep as up to date as it can be in terms of patches and the like, set them up with a lovely user account that limits what can be done. For the word processing that mum does, and the occasional bit of surfing that they do, there is totally no need for them to upgrade - and trying to teach them how to make things work ("How do I shut it down now? The button used to be there and look like this...") really isn't worth the neglidgable benefit to them.

It is exactly like the old phones that they have - okay, color screens and the like, but no smartphone, no web surfing. They use it for making calls and the (very) occasional text message. Why on earth would they want to "upgrade" to a new shiny smartphone that they have to learn all over again for the simple features and would never use the additional stuff?

Actually I'll switch it up. I carefully waited for the specs to "mature" then I got an iPhone 3GS as a direct upgrade from an old Windows Mobile 6 phone. Clear improvement. But NOW I see no reason to upgrade "just to an iPhone 4".

Sure; Windows 7 is bound to get a larger market share; but did the researchers also keep in mind that with Windows 7 professional and up you can easily run a native Windows XP environment within Windows 7 ?

That is... assuming the user has a CPU with the hardware accelerated virtualization needed to run Virtual PC.

Good to know. I tried it a long time back for reasons I don't recall, and gave up on it after a several GB, several hour download finished, only for the installer to tell me my processor didn't support it.

While I can't speak about the mobile parts, game console browsers are nearly unusable. While the Wii has a pretty decent browser and the PS3s isn't terrible, both the PSP and 3DS browsers are unusable except for looking up basic info. Slow, no flash, etc.

Who needs $1500 Macs when you have users willing to rebuy marginally improved $500 phones or tablet year after year? Or rebuy them after dropping them in the street, off the sailboat, or leaving them in a taxi?

Apple is no longer a computer company. They're a phone marketing company that has a small computer branch that is an ever-shrinking chunk of their revenue (47% of Apple's revenue - and 52% of their profit - comes from sales of just iPhones).